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For the past few days, Albertans have been justifiably preoccupied with the implications that Bill 22 has for democracy in our province.

Most people agree that no one, including the most powerful politicians, should be above the law. That’s why so many people are outraged and alarmed by the UCP’s decision to fire the legislature’s independent elections commissioner.

Even Donald Trump was not able to fire the special prosecutor who was investigating him. But that is effectively what Jason Kenney and the UCP are trying to do with Bill 22.

But, as bad as all of this is, Bill 22 is not just an attack on democracy in our province; it’s also an attack on the pension security of hundreds of thousands of Albertans.

Every day, millions of working Albertans make contributions to funds designed to provide them with some measure of security in their retirement years.

For example, all workers pay 5.1 per cent of their wages into the Canada Pension Plan (CPP). These contributions are matched by their employers. Most public-sector workers pay an additional 10 per cent of their salaries into their workplace pension plans.

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It is these huge pools of personal savings that Premier Kenney and his government have targeted with Bill 22. In the case of the CPP, the UCP wants to redirect the billions of dollars that Albertans contribute to the plan every year into a new Alberta-only plan.

Experts agree that it would cost millions to withdraw from CPP and set up and run a separate plan. They also agree that an Alberta-only plan would be less portable and more vulnerable to economic downturns. And there is no guarantee that the UCP plan would actually provide similar benefits to pensioners.

In the case of the Alberta Teachers Retirement Fund (ATRF), the UCP wants to essentially expropriate the money that teachers have been managing for themselves and put those funds into the hands of AIMCo, the money manager owned by the provincial government.

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Teachers have made it clear that this is not their preference. And in the case of Alberta’s biggest public-sector pension plans — the Local Authorities Pensions Plan and the Public Services Pension Plan — the UCP wants to assert government control over the pension boards and remove the option that the plans currently have of switching fund managers in the event they lose confidence in AIMCo.

In other words, the supposedly “free-market” UCP wants to create a government monopoly.

The thing that all of these changes have in common is power. The UCP wants to control the billions of dollars that millions of individual Albertans have been saving diligently for their own retirements.

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In response to this blatant grab for money and control, we, the representatives of more than 300,000 working Albertans, have a three-part message for the premier and his government.

First, this isn’t your money. It belongs to the Albertans who saved it month after month. How can a party that styles itself as a champion of individual rights and property rights think it’s appropriate for government to essentially seize control of other people’s savings?

Second, you don’t have permission. You never mentioned sweeping changes to Alberta’s retirement system in the recent election so, you do not have a mandate for any of this.

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Third, you don’t have the confidence of the people who this money really belongs to.

Working Albertans did not ask the UCP to interfere in the administration of their pensions, nor do they have confidence that they will run those plans in a fair or responsible way.

In fact, we’re worried that what you’re attempting to do is use other people’s money to create a huge slush fund to finance an agenda that has not yet been articulated to the public and which most people would not feel comfortable using their life savings to support.

For these reasons, on behalf all working Albertans, we demand that you keep your hands off our retirement savings.

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You can do that by rescinding Bill 22 and abandoning your reckless and irresponsible plan to withdraw from CPP.

If you don’t do these things, we will make sure all of our members know who, exactly, seized their pension savings and put their retirement security at risk. We will make sure that Bill 22 becomes an albatross that hangs around your necks, from now until the next election.

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